Slacker Radio continues its dominance as one of the best streaming music apps. The service and its complementary Android app have undergone many changes in recent months to help it compete with the likes of Spotify and Tidal. Slacker's latest updates aren't as considerable as those we saw in the 2013 revamp, but the under-the-hood fixes and thoughtfully curated stations make the app more appealing to casual and hardcore music fans alike. Slacker Radio lacks a few minor features found in competing products, such as track crossfading and gapless playback, but it has enough great features and content of its own to be worthy of an Editors' Choice award.

Subscriptions

Slacker Radio's Android app has a free Basic tier that lets you stream dozens of stations, but monetizes the experience with audio and banner ads. You're also limited to six song skips per hour, so you'll want to use the skip button judiciously if you opt for free listening.

The Basic plan is a good introduction to the service, but serious music fans should sign up for the $3.99 per month Slacker Radio Plus. This mid-level tier lets you enjoy commercial-free music, unlimited song skips, and offline listening. The top-tier Premium service, which costs $9.99 per month, delivers the ultimate Slacker Radio experience by opening the door to on-demand listening and the ability to create custom playlists.

The $9.99 per plan is the industry standard that Spotify and Tidal have also adopted, though Slacker Radio lacks the former's excellent $14.99 per month Family Plan and the latter's $19.99 HiFi plan, which delivers delicious uncompressed audio streams.

Sound Quality

In testing, Slacker Radio streamed crisp, hiccup-free audio over my home and office network connections. Unless you're an audiophile who's used to listening to uncompressed, high-bit-rate music through the highest-end devices, Slacker Radio's sound quality will satisfy. If that is how you listen, however, you should pay for the uncompressed FLAC audio of Tidal's HiFi plan.

I tested Slacker by listening to, among others albums, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which streamed criply to my headphones. The bass lines were relatively full, and I noted a good separation of high and low sounds. Certainly, a good pair of headphones improves the experience, but it comes down to the signal, in the end.

Interface and Categories

The Slacker Radio home screen has a panel-driven interface that highlights new content, recommended stations, and curated playlists. As a result, it's easy to dive into the service's deep well. For example, the app recommended that I check out Slacker 20: East Coast Hip-Hop (because I listened to Wu-Tang Clan, I assume) and Great Songs You Forgot (because I listened to the playlist One-Hit Wonders). Slacker Radio's recommendation engine is light years ahead of Pandora Internet Radio's oddball Music Genome Project choices.

The Stations section holds Slacker Radio's 20+ genre categories and more than 100 individual stations. Tapping the Themes icon, for example, reveals multiple subgenres, such as Artists to Watch 2016, Attack of the Boy Bands, and Pokemon Radio. The category king is Holiday, which boasts 35 channels at the time of this writing.

The My Music section lets you access stations you create, playlists, bookmarked stations, and recently played stations. Your three most recently played stations also live on the home screen as shortcuts. Favorite Songs is easily my, well, favorite section, as it creates a station around songs you've marked as favorites. It's like having a personalized greatest hits station, and it's a joy.

Specials is the section that truly demonstrates Slacker Radio's greatness. The stations in this category are all human-curated and/or human-hosted programming that provide entertaining insight into a song or album. Led Zepplin: A to Z is a prime example of a Special. The show takes you on an alphabetical journey through the band's catalog, and features exclusive interviews with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, as well as commentary from Redbeard, a host from music site InTheStudio.net.

Live Radio and Curated Channels

The News/Talk/Sports category is exactly what it sounds like—stations that cater to the news, talk, and sports crowds. Comedy, ABC News, American Public Media, and ESPN programming fall under this category. The most intriguing of these stations are the ESPN stations that let you tune in to live sports talk. Unfortunately, ESPN is the only Slacker Radio channel to serve up live programming; the rest is streams of prerecorded content. iHeartRadio, on the other hand, has over a thousand live terrestrial radio stations on offer. Slacker Radio's Men and women's lifestyle stations (where you'll hear grooming tips, financial advice, and more) round out the talk options. If you're looking for a streaming music app that specializes in live radio and lets you build custom stations, however, iHeartRadio may be more your speed.

Spotify doesn't offer live streaming options, but it counters Slacker Radio with very cool features of its own. Spotify lets you download and subscribe to the playlists that your buddies create and suggests songs based on what's trending in your geographic area. It's a far more social experience than Slacker Radio offers. Plus, Spotify has gapless playback and crossfade capabilities. Those are both features that I'd love to see Slacker Radio adopt.

Tapping a Slacker Radio channel launches an information page with subsections that let you Ban or Favorite a song, read lyrics, and view album and artist information. The album and artist pages are far more streamlined than Spotify's and therefore a bit easier to read and navigate. Unfortunately, lyrics aren't available for every song.

Slacker Radio's Fine Tune area has toggles (for turning on/off the Slacker DJ, and ESPN and News updates), and a slider that lets you adjust the ratio of hits to discovery within a given station. On the topic of Slacker Radio's DJs, the service's human-curated content is top-notch; the DJs add gravitas to many of the themed stations such as Pharrell: DNA. There I learned that "Hollaback Girl" was Gwen Stefani's response to a perceived diss from Hole's Courtney Love. This type of background information makes Slacker Radio feel like an old school radio station, but without the grating morning zoo crews.

Radio Royalty

If you dig taking custom stations on the go, you'll be well served by Slacker Radio for Android. The app has excellent curated stations, informative DJs, and a well-balanced mix of music, news, and talk that make it a gem, much like the Editors' Choice award-winning Spotify. If you're an Android user who values a varied listening experience, download Slacker Radio, you won't be disappointed.

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For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst.
When he isn't staring at a monitor (or two) and churning out Web hosting, music, utilities, and video game copy, Jeffrey mentors, practices Jeet Kune Do, blogs, podcasts, and speaks at the occasional con. He also collects vinyl and greatly enjoys...
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